And the winners are… Bacchus Kft. and DS Consulting!

19 April 2018

From January to March this year we held our third START2ACT energy saving competition - the START2ACT Winter Challenge. For this competition we challenged small businesses to show us how they minimise energy use from heating through instigating behaviour change, altering operating procedures or investing in equipment upgrades.

We received a range of inspiring contributions from companies from across Hungary, Croatia, Poland and the UK, who all took slightly different approaches to reducing their heating demand, in order to save carbon and lower their heating demand.

The judging period has now closed and we can reveal that our two winners of the main prizes are Bacchus Kft. from Hungary and DS Consulting from Croatia! We also had six great entries who won our runner-up prizes

Bacchus Kft. created a video to show all of the actions that they undertake to reduce the need for heating at their restaurant Nimród vendéglő. Watch the video to see visual examples of how they control the temperature, dry and polish their glasses rather than using the dryer and use winter dress codes to save energy.

Tamas Tüske from Bacchus Kft stumbled upon the START2ACT Winter Challenge on social media. He said:

"I strongly believe we should be committed to saving energy at work. The generation of today has to act up to mitigate the effects of climate change. I remember I was particularly happy when the Paris Agreement was ratified in 2015, however I also realised we can only achieve the goals of the Agreement if we act locally. I do my best to spread the word about climate actions and I’m happy that we can do something about it with my employees"

DS Consulting upgraded their window panes and frames to improve the thermal efficiency in their office. Previously their windows were several decades old and were known to be inefficient, so they calculated that they could make a 36% saving in energy use by upgrading to new units with secondary glazing and sealing.

Daniel from DS Consulting said:

"My office space was surrounded by mostly heated areas and the heat losses through the exterior windows were relatively large. Especially because of the bad thermal properties of old external windows. I want to reduce the heat loss to the smallest possible extent. I'm business oriented to energy efficiency in the industry and I wanted to show in my office the possibilities that exist in reducing energy losses."

For the winning entries Bacchus Kft. and DS Consulting will receive an Alexa-enabled Amazon Echo (see below to see how you can win next time!).

We would also like to congratulate the Winter Challenge runners-up, who all shared brilliant contributions of their energy saving efforts:

Thank you to everyone who participated in the competition and to those who spread the word. We hope you all enjoyed the challenge.

Don’t worry if you missed the Winter Challenge - the START2ACT Spring Challenge is now open! Visit this link to find out how you could win an Alexa-enabled Amazon Echo or a solar powered power bank. It takes just 5 minutes to enter!